Archive for the ‘pain’ Category

The Riderless Black Horse is an expression I borrowed from Stephen King to describe migraines. The hoofbeats thudding through your head are ominous and threatening.

I was off work today, bedridden for the most part in a dark room – probably should have used an injector but I have a certain limit below which I won’t use them.

But then at 5pm I had an appointment. At the eye doctor.

I sat for millennia as the light from a thousand suns poured into first one eye and then the other and they boiled in their sockets. Molten lava sloshed in the channels of my brain, following a tidal pattern that had no apparent source. Entire memories and experiences cried out and shriveled up, turning black and blowing away as fine sparkling dust motes.

Then he charged me several hundred bucks and sent me on my way, sweaty and shaken.

****

The Malaysian airliner issue is still out there. I’ve heard lots of impassioned arguments for it being just an accident, a malfunction, or something less than sinister.

What kind of talk is that? Seriously? McFarland has supposedly worked in national security posts and she doesn’t recognize that we’re watching the terrorists very closely right now? You better believe that they are watching the spider web for telltale vibrations. Information flow never flows only one way unless one is an idiot. Our security forces are many things, but idiots? No.

As a former NSA director told me, we’re still looking at China, Russia and North Korea. We’re not as focused further south, or in the Southern Hemisphere.

We’re looking at China, Russia, and North Korea??? Really? They are the LAST places I’d look. Those are stupid ideas. And those are perfect examples of poor misdirection.

She says also:

… not everyone in the world is sharing information. Our satellites may not be looking south, but maybe Chinese satellites are, especially since Malaysia borders the Strait of Malacca, one of China’s most important trade routes. The Chinese official press has criticized the U.S. for not sharing our satellite data. Are they sharing theirs?

My guess? China has worked very hard to scrub their data of any information that tells about their sensors and technology first. Subtle variations in the images tell what kind of apertures exist in their systems, aberrations present, and detector capabilities (noise, readout noise, sensitivity, etc.). That takes time, so I am not surprised it took so long to distribute what they do have. Just handing out photos willy-nilly is just giving away information about your capabilities.

… even if we have the technology it isn’t always used, or used correctly. There were three separate instances where the missing plane wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do. Yet Malaysian air traffic controllers missed them. India has radar but, according to some reports, turns it off at night to save money.

India has radar but turns it off at night. And that couldn’t possibly have been exploited? Surely not.

There have been so many stupid things uttered by people who are supposed to be smart that I strongly suspect that there is an energized campaign of misinformation on all sides. That’s easier to swallow than everyone involved is an idiot.

“The reason I don’t lean toward it being hijacked and then landed in a foreign country to be used later is that you’ve already advertised that there’s a missing aircraft out there now,” Cane said. “Why would you allow your potential targets to raise their defenses? That’s not the way terrorists operate.”

Have IQ’s dropped precipitously recently? Did the 1993 Trade Center bombing just totally get forgotten?

Terrorists observe. What they learn from observing determines how they will act.

Got a call from the sitter today. My daughter had issues at both ends – projectile from one led to explosive reaction at the other. That is as delicately as I can put it.

Cruel Wife was leaving work at that time anyway and said “Work the extra you need to work and then come home, I’ll deal with it.”

I came in the door and gagged.

Franken-Boy was playing on the Wii, oblivious. Cruel Wife was in the laundry. I gagged some more.

CW came up and saw my stomach was rolling and said “Go on, get out of here.”

I leaped at the chance to go to the local CVS to get Ritz™ crackers and some Sprite™ because they just plain stay down easier. And I figured Girlhead might have an easier time of it, too.

Guess what? I came back in the door and was exposed to it all over again.

That time I made it to the bathroom as the nausea swelled, but… nope. Nothing.

I have a really sensitive nose – I’m the canary in the coal mine. Years ago I went down the street to a buddy’s store and said “Dude, did something burn up today?”

“No.”

“Well, I’m smelling something hot.”

“Can’t smell a thing.”

“Well, I’m telling you something is not right.”

“Nope. Nothing.”

The next day I came in and he said “Dude, we had a fire last night. Lucky the place did not burn down.” He then led me to the spot where a cord to one of the coolers had failed and resulted in a big black section of wall.

As I tell CW, “The nose knows.”

The smell is not getting better. I’m not getting used to it.

So the question I have is this:

In general, are all men wussier than women when it comes to smells, or are men just by nature given more sensitive schnozzes, or am I a total wimp?

I’m pretty sure I’m a wimp, but I’m curious about the thoughts on the other parts of the question.

****
I do work with this one machine shop all the time and have for the last 12 years or so.

So today my buddy Steel Nerves stopped by. He said a friend’s boy is autistic, too (like mine, but worse, as you’ll see). His buddy asked his son to go to the fridge and get a beer. The kid went and got it and just stood there in front of his dad as you can imagine a totally literal autistic kid would.

So the Dad says, “Don’t just stand there, throw that beer over here.”

Now, if you are the parent of an autistic kid you will understand exactly what I mean when I said my warning bells started to ring shrilly. I said “Oh, no, Steel Nerves… tell me he didn’t…”

Steel Nerves nods and says “Yup, kid hauls off and chucks that bottle as hard as he can and it hits his dad square in the center of the forehead – CRACK! He came around to tell me about it, sporting a HUGE lump dead-center of the forehead – black and blue, mostly black.”

I said “SHEEEIT, Steel Nerves! How old is the boy?”

“Sixteen. Knocked his Dad right the **** out,” and nods matter of factly.

Can you imagine how hard a sixteen year old could hurl a beer bottle at your forehead? Damn.

Oh, how materialistic I am. This need to possess something I will never ever have, probably won’t even see, much less hold.

Ow. And no I wasn’t talking about Charlize Theron or Kate Beckinsale or anything like that. I may be immature, arrogant, and disrespectful of authority but I’m not an animal, for Pete’s sake. Think of me more like a big dog that talks.

I beseeched Cruel Wife in tones of most urgent need. “I would like you to say yes, without even thinking about it. Say yes, that I may have one of these for my very own.”

She replied without even thinking about it.

“No.”

Nothing quite like a swift emotional/spiritual kick to the nuts. She has earned her stage name honestly.

****

I can’t help but say it again.

Obama is a complete and total flake. He’s dishonest, he’s scheming, he’s not qualified for the job he is in, and he never should have gotten there because he isn’t there legally. But that’s all sewage-infested water under the bridge.

What we should focus on is that somehow out of 350 MILLION people, we could not come up with five opponents that look like they have the ability to knock him out of office. This is so amazingly bad it is as if you took a spoiled piece of meat and made a confit with rancid grease and stuffed it in pasta made from ground-up FAIL. It is so mind-numbingly piss-poor of a showing that I clench up all over in disappointment. There really is not a word that encapsulates what I want to say. Nothing comes close in order-of-magnitude.

We could have picked names randomly from the pool of individuals that met the age and naturalized American requirements (ahem) and done as good of a job.

We really stand a better than even chance of winding up with this turkey for four more years. I would have calculated the odds of being struck by lightning at the exact moment that both you and the rabid bull that was goring you were struck by a meteor as being better than Obama showing up on the first day of a second term.

And what happened? We walked away with a lineup of assclowns that I wouldn’t trust in a valet service to park my rusted out jeep.

Aw hell, folks, it’s Grab Ass Tuesday. Technically it is Wednesday as I post this, but I don’t give a rat’s patootie.

Here’s a joke to warm your heart. I am told by Cruel Wife that if I ever do this I’m dead meat.

A couple was shopping at the mall on Christmas Eve, and the place was packed. Walking through the crowded mall the wife suddenly looks up and notices her husband is no where in sight. They have so much to do in such a short amount of time, that this really pisses her off. She grabs her cellphone to call him and ask him where the hell he is.

The husband answers in a calm voice says, “Honey, remember the jewelry store we went into 5 years ago where you fell in love with that diamond necklace but we were so broke that we could not afford it, and I told you not to worry, that one day I’d be able to buy it for you?”

She is so touched she begins to cry…”Yes-I remember that jewelry store.”

He said, “Well I’m in the bar right next to it.”

****

Sent to me by a friend of my Dad’s – Salty Nutter – don’t know where he got it.

Yeah, I shot jerky out my nose when I saw it, too.

****

My kitty, Jilly-Boo/Jill/Jillbert (pick one), has been as cute as a kitty can be since I got home from the hospital. I think she realizes that life is fleeting and moments are precious, that relationships are what really matter. It’s scritches that make the world purr, dammit. Pictures get bigger if you click on them.

The neck pic… bottom middle is where they hacked out part of my sternum to use in my neck fusion. A faint “V” to the left of it 2-1/2″ and up 1-1/2″ (“V” pointing to 10 o’clock) is where the drain tube was. The dark line is where they hacked in using something very similar to Aggie Sith’s Zombie-Killing Machete.

Swallowing is still a chore. Hurts still but when medicated the hurt is less than what I experienced all day every day prior to the surgery. I’ve got no complaints.

I even have more strength back. Before, when I tried to open a bag of tortillas I did not have enough strength in my thumbs and forefingers to open the ziploc bag and ended up cutting the zip-tops off of every bag I came across. Cruel Wife thought I was being an ass but I figured better to let her think I was an ass than to worry her with things like that.

I am still not quite up to snuff. It’s nothing bad, I am just taking less painkillers by pure choice and feeling the effects of post-surgery more.

I’m told to stop doing this as being all tensed up and such makes it take that much longer to heal but dammit I’m sick and tired of being drugged. I know people pay good money for that but I value my brain.

Don’t you worry, I give in when I’ve got no other choice. I’m a control freak. What do you want to hear?

I did get out with Cruel Wife and toured her company.

Some roads around Detroit are better than I remember. Some still suck ass, and those range from feeling like the cobblestones at the end of the Tour de France to feeling like a Hare Scramble in Baja, Mexico.

Slice it any way you like, Detroit roads are hell on neck fusions and it is a LONG drive. On the ride out there I tensed up, gritted my teeth, made sudden hissing noises. Sensing that it would be better to distract Cruel Wife and myself from these sounds and thoughts, I struck up a conversation.

LK: Hey.

CW: What?

LK: When I meet your new boss, can I screw with his head?

CW: No.

LK: Can I subtly push him off balance?

CW: No.

LK: Can I plant the seeds for screwing with his head the next time I meet him?

CW: NO! No no no no – NO. Leave him alone. Wait until you and I both know him better.

LK: (Pouting) Man, I enjoy messing with people’s heads.

CW: I know you do, and so does he in an overt way. You like to do it stealthily so they don’t get it at first…

LK: And then, reveal it to them when it will have maximal impact. Yes. Yes, I do.

LK: (Pause while thinking about it.) Huh huh huh.

(That’s the laugh women can’t do because they don’t have the right equipment.)

CW: No, you cannot mess with his head. Leave him alone.

Sensing it would be better to go back to tensing up, gritting my teeth, and making sudden hissing noises I started doing so.

About 30 long minutes later we had dim-sum with her boss and co-workers. It was great. I waddled out of there totally stuffed, loosened the neck brace a few buttons, steadied myself mightily with my walking stick, and we set off for the rest of the day.

Went by her company and got to see all the cool lab testing equipment and this one thing called a magnaflux.

You spray the part you want to look at with this solvent containing a crapload of colloidal magnetic particles. Then you put the test part in this giant hoop and put a 2000A-5000A pulse through it with a *BANG*. The part jumps (presumably to let you know that it is fully cooked) and then when you look at it under a black light you can see fluorescing cracks where the particles are aligned with the induced B-field. It’s really quite cool. It helps greatly if you believe in electrons when explaining the large-current part but if we just assume that the magnetic field was let out of a bottle of magnetism† then everyone walks away happy.

† Yes, I believe in electrons. I just can’t see them so they kind of piss me off. What can I say? I was attacked by a clown as a child and my dad was an electrician, opening me up for getting the feces zapped out of me a few times. The evil clown probably isn’t relevant but I thought I’d throw it in there. Dad argued that it was my fault (sure, blame the victim) and I pointed my unburned fingers at the electrons which unsurprisingly didn’t show themselves any more, acting all innocent-ey.

I got a 92% (missed 4). I don’t feel too badly about it because the ones I missed had to do with planetary moons around gas giants (why clutter my brain with useless stuff that I can always go look up?), the whole “Pluto isn’t a planet” idiocy (like I give a sh*t), heaviest noble gas of which I never once used for anything (I’m partial to Helium, Xenon, Argon, Krypton, thank you), and one on cellular growth. I have nothing to be ashamed of.

All right folks. I may have done something not so smart Saturday night but it was because I felt so good I didn’t even think about it. We have a hand-chopper (Blitzhacker) thing and I was chopping up pickles. Six hits, light ones, with my right hand…. and bazinga. Not sure what happened, probably nothing bad but it was kind of painful. Intensely related to my neck. Hurts other places.

So if you are sitting there in your back yard and the rich kid up on the hill is using his iPad helicopter to spy on your sister while she sunbathes and takes pictures of you doing … things… and then uses pictures of both for his own uses and shares them with the other neighbors… do you give him back his iQuadcopter when it lands in your yard?

Iran is a bunch of douchebags that should be bombed the rest of the way back into the stone ages before they are actually able to strike Israel. But at the same time I don’t blame them for saying to the US “Hey, thanks, free spy-plane!”

“We obviously believe strongly in a diplomatic approach. We want to see the Iranians engage and, as you know, we have attempted to bring about that engagement over the course of the last three-plus years. It has not proven effective, but we are not giving up on it,” [Secretary of State Hilary Clinton] said.

What isn’t said as loudly by the Obama administration:

Yeah, we’ve seen how lots of sucking up and bowing has really proven less effective in controlling the leaders of rogue nations and human-rights-trampling nations than we would have thought. We really thought toadying up and acting all beta-male would be respected by these regimes and they would fall right in line with our new Metrosexual Alpha-Shemale approach – you know, the one President Obama keeps demonstrating time and time again? It’s designed to make everyone think you’re alpha male without you ever having to be that way – it’s much safer, we think.

Cruel Wife found our kitties, Jill and Jack, lying on my side of the bed on top of one of my shirts bestowing Catsmus blessings upon the Holy Chicken of Christmas while I was in the hospital. High Priestess Cruel Wife delivered the HC^2 to the altar next to my bed. Now, if you are squeamish, just be content with the kitties and do not scroll down.

Here I have been blessed with the HC^2’s Anointment of Anonymity. Yes, that gash looks like something that Aggie of Sith would bestow using her Machete of Zombie Filleting +4. Correction, that is what it would look like if Aggie used a machete and lots of Wound Sealant compound instead of sutures. Apparently this doc is not a fan of catgut and rarely uses a knot where a squirt of something else will do.

Below is what the x-ray showed once the plate was installed. Disc taken out, piece of my sternum popped in, and plate and screws from a door hinge from Lowe’s. (I asked that they use the Redneck Grab-bag Special rather than the fancy-schmancy Ti6Al4V golden-child formulations)

Yes.

My. Head. Is. Being. Held. On. Using. Two. Screws.

I suspect that the vertical wire is for the longer-range antennae that is connected to the fish-hooks the government installed in my brain years ago. Mind control. It’s all about mind control.

I can’t even feel the piece of sternum that they stole. Can’t feel the screws all that much. Can feel the incision and the sore neck ligaments that got stretched out.

I have some problems swallowing, which puts a damper on my food intake, but that’s not such a bad thing. I chew my food much more thoroughly and enjoy each bite more because taking a big huge swallow isn’t really all that much fun.

This morning the doc chastised me for babying my neck. He said “Tip your head all the way to the right. No, you can move it more than that. Ok, now the left… uh huh… tip it all the way back…. forward now… more… more…”

I said “But… but… ok, the physical and occupational therapists came in and told me all these things that I have to do in a certain way, how to hold my head, how to move to get out of bed…”

He looks at me with this “I pity you” look and says “Who are you going to listen to? Them or me? Listen to ME. I’ve done lots of these. Your bones are more solid than 99% of the other people’s out there† – you have very strong bones. You could get in a car accident and you’d be fine. Don’t baby it.”

I shook his hand for like the tenth time today, able to feel his hand with all five fingers and said “Thanks Doc, really.”

† There is independent corroboration on the bone toughness thing. Years ago when I had my arm mangled in the machine at the plywood plant the orthopedic surgeon (we’ll call her Dr. Frigide) had to enlist the help of a family friend, also a doctor (we’ll call him Doc Peter Relief). Apparently they were having a horrible time getting the screws installed properly even with oversized holes in the arm bones. Dr. Frigide wasn’t the largest gal in the world but she was a physical anomaly – she was a blackbody radiator hovering around 2-3K. The room would drop by 10-15 degrees when she walked in. She was straining to get them in my even a few turns and Doc PR was sweating profusely by the time the deed was done even with her there to cool things off. They could only figure that years of lifting heavy weights and draining cows of their daily output (plus genetics) led to some strong bones and kept them from being shattered much worse than they were. Osteoporosis is likely not going to be one of the things I’ll be afflicted with when I grow older.

I’ll have a more in-depth recounting of the day tomorrow.

Update: Perhaps the fingers-sensation-free-of-tinglies tingly feeling that I was getting was a bit premature. I suppose good days and bad days exist here, too. But, there’s been no neck and arm pain still. I’ve got no complaints there.

My Personal “Things” – Don’t Peek

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